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met most nights on the road. My job is to
do all the arrangements—the hotels, the sites for the debates, the
transportation, everything. I’d go over all the arrangements with him.”
    “Did you generally meet in his room?”
    Connie looked at me for a moment, the silence
telling me what she thought of the question. “Yes,” she said. She drank the
rest of her coffee in one gulp, put the cup down, and turned it so the handle
lined up with the edge of the table.
    “And when did you leave his room?”
    “Not sure.” She didn’t look like she was trying to
remember. “Between 11:00 and 11:30, I think.”
    “Tell us a little about Mr. Hagerty,” I said. “How
did you meet?”
    Connie sighed. She started to talk, the words
coming out like someone else had written them. Her eyes looked distant. “I was
in some trouble at the time. I’d left home. I was maybe sixteen, had some
problems with my folks. I got mixed up with some people I shouldn’t’ve. I saw a
billboard for Soul Savers. I was hungry, they took me in.”
    Ryan said, “This was a shelter for runaways?”
    Connie looked at him like she’d rather be talking
to me. “You could call it that,” she said, then turned back to me.
    “You seem to have come a long way, this position
of responsibility Mr. Hagerty gave you,” I said. “Tell us about that.”
    Connie’s face was expressionless. “Soul Savers got
me back in school. I took courses in computers, you know, secretarial stuff.
Started helping out at their headquarters. That’s where I met Mr. Hagerty. He
liked me, let me help the woman who did his arrangements from the main office.
I learned the routine. That’s pretty much it.”
    “How’d you get from the main office to traveling
with him?”
    “As the trips got longer, Mr. Hagerty decided he
needed a person with him on the road. The woman I worked for didn’t want to do
it—she was older, had a family. So he invited me. Not like I had a reason to
stay in my studio apartment.”
    “Did he ever consider having Mrs. Hagerty do your
job?” I said.
    There was a trace of a rueful smile on Connie’s
face. “No, I don’t think that would have worked out.”
    “How so?” Ryan said.
    Connie turned to him. “She doesn’t want to have to
do that kind of thing. She wants to concentrate on the big picture. That’s what
she calls it: ‘the big picture.’” She looked impatient. “I want a cigarette. Do
you mind if we go outside?” She signed the restaurant check.
    “No, that’s fine,” I said. Connie led us out of
the restaurant and around to the side of the hotel. We were out of the wind,
and with the sun high in the sky, the temperature in the forties, it was
pleasant. She took a cigarette out of her bag and lit it. She leaned against
the brick wall of the hotel and closed her eyes in the bright sunshine.
    I said, “Tell us a little about Margaret Hagerty.
What’s your relationship with her?”
    Connie paused, as if she was planning what she had
to say. “Margaret has been very good to me. Not everyone would let me travel
with them.”
    “You mean because of your background?”
    “That’s part of it. Someone like me, most people
assume I’m going to steal from them, whatever. Or that I’m still using.”
    “What kinds of things have you learned from her?”
    “You met her, right?”
    “A few minutes ago,” I said.
    “She knows how to dress, how to act polite. You
know, how to behave with other professional-type people. I didn’t know anything
about that world. You understand.”
    The sun was bright on her face. Her hair was a
medium brown, pulled back in a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. The sun
showed faint crows’ feet starting around her eyes. There were a few acne scars
on her left temple. Her nose, thin and straight, was framed by strong cheeks
bones. She had a minor overbite, not really obvious, but enough that her
parents would have rushed her to the orthodontist if she had come from the
right side